Singapore's NIE, AWS to redefine teaching and learning

The National Institute of Education, an autonomous institute of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (NIE NTU, Singapore) and Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company, have signed a three-year memorandum of understanding (MoU) to accelerate educational innovation.

A key initiative under the MoU is the Technology for Education Centre (TEC), a new innovation hub located on NIE’s campus. The centre will provide a secure environment to explore state-of-the-art technologies and applications, while also allowing industry partners to test their technologies in educational settings.

As part of the collaboration, AWS will provide access to a range of digital learning resources, including self- paced courses and training programmes such as AWS Skill Builder. Future initiatives include co-hosted hackathons, hands-on workshops and student-led roundtables or forums discussing ethical considerations of AI in education. A key example is the AI in Education Innovation Challenge, a flagship competition designed to inspire the NIE students - who are training to become teachers - to design, develop, and deploy AI-powered tools.

Joint research initiatives will further enable NIE researchers to go deeper into data-driven education approaches, improving teaching practices, learner outcomes, and policy development. Student-led service-learning initiatives, on the other hand, are expected to leverage AWS’s generative AI (gen AI) technologies such as Amazon Bedrock and Amazon Q Developer to address real-world issues.

AWS’s technical expertise will, for example, be integrated into Group Endeavours in Service Learning (GESL), a community-engagement programme. Through this collaboration, AWS AI specialists and NIE GESL facilitators co-guide student teams from solution design to prototyping and implementation. Interactive workshops introduce participants to cloud-based solutions such as Amazon SageMaker and AWS Lambda, enabling them to design and deploy technology solutions tailored for diverse learning communities.

These efforts are complemented by demonstration talks and real-world case studies, fostering critical awareness of ethical AI use and inspiring students to adopt technology responsibly.

As part of the collaboration, NIE and AWS will jointly drive the annual development of at least three innovative education technology projects, with at least one scaled for broader use annually. Existing NIE-AWS partnership projects include AppleTree, an online platform designed to enhance collaborative argumentation. It enables students to engage in structured discourse through visual mapping, embedded collaboration scripts, and real-time learning analytics—all powered by AWS Cloud to ensure scalability and seamless performance.

Similarly, CoVAAPD, a web-based video annotation and analytics system for physical education, leverages AWS solutions to support asynchronous mentoring, collaborative reflection, and data-driven professional development.

Professor Liu Woon Chia, NIE Director, said: “This strategic partnership signifies a shared commitment to leveraging cutting-edge technologies to transform education in Singapore. Together, we are transforming how teachers teach, how students learn, and how research shapes real-world policy and practice.”

Elsie Tan, Country Manager, Worldwide Public Sector, Singapore at AWS added: "Educators shape our future workforce. By combining the NIE's expertise with AWS's AI technologies in experiential learning, we're supporting Singapore's Smart Nation vision to develop digitally - empowered teachers ready to address tomorrow's challenges with confidence and digital fluency."